The Flying Up Moon: When navigating change, mācī osihuw!

Cree teachings on seeing our resilience and connectedness as we change

Saturday, August 24, 2024

This event has passed.

A duck flying up alongside a concrete block wall that bears the duck’s shadow. Partially obscured.

Photo: Flying up, Brad Hagan, CC BY 2.0

Event details

Cost:
Free, registration required
Location:
The group will meet in Bonnie & John Buhler Hall, Level 1 and proceed together to Level 6
Language and Accessibility:
This event is offered in English.

New changes can be scary and exhilarating. Tānisi isi wāpātaman — How do we see them? Are they challenges or new opportunities? Navigating change depends on you and keeping your relationships within Wahkowtowin clean.

Join Cree Knowledge Keeper Marilyn Dykstra and learn to rise towards the light with your arms outstretched, like an open tipi, in strength and hope.

Fly up and mācī osihuw! (don’t crash!)

This workshop will explore how as we “fly up” into something new, we gain strength from natural law, which teaches us about the sacredness of our relationships and how not to crash. Our first flights may be wobbly, but we can only get better at it. Though our blood memories will guide us, it is important not to live in the shadows, only looking at the past. Once we effectively navigate the learning, we can become part of the sacred formation within our communities.

Workshop

This workshop is part of a monthly Wahkowtowin and Ways of Being series led by Knowledge Keeper Marilyn Dykstra. Each month, we will explore a variety of moon, pole and tea teachings in the Cree tradition.

Wahkowtowin – which translates to kinship – highlights how relationships, communities and the natural world are all interconnected.

Participants will discover and reflect on their connections with each other, with balance and with human rights through teachings and a traditional tea.

Marilyn Dykstra is a status Bill C‑31 First Nations woman from northern Manitoba. She has been immersed in a working matriarchal system that practiced Indigenous ways of thinking and being since she was born. Alongside her family, she has participated in many peaceful social justice movements.

Marilyn uses her matriarchal knowledge as a foundation for her work in the Indigenous community, which has been ongoing for over thirty years. She still follows her matriarchal teachings, but she has also spent her life learning traditional knowledge and passing the teachings on.

She is a pow wow dancer, knowledge keeper, and she carries the responsibility of a bundle. She happily participates in naming ceremonies, sweats, pipe ceremonies, moon teachings and more.

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